Is it urgent?

I was listening to a clip of somatic awareness teacher Licia Sky last week. Although I liked the interview, I was not really paying too much attention until until I heard her say the following:

When you come from a background of trauma in your early life, it can feel like every situation that you come across has the potential to be urgent.”

I paused the video and took a moment to process. I realized her words were describing my reality. I often have lists of things I need to accomplish. In my mind I know these things have a sequence and don’t need to be done all at once, but my nervous system interprets as if everything is urgent.

Because of early experiences, it has often felt like there’s always one shoe about to fall off. I can easily move away from being at ease to being anxious. As much as I know this, and I have known this for some time, the way for me to begin to handle my sense of impending doom, of everything being urgent, has been less cognitive and more about breath and movement.

The practice of yoga has been healing for that reason. For the time I’m on my mat, I know that I’ve already taken off my two shoes. They can’t fall off. I intentionally give myself permission to be and follow it up with a session of whatever amount of time that has the sole intention to simply notice the moment.

It’s hard to express how powerful of a practice this is to anyone who does not struggle with that sense of urgency that comes from being in a flight or fight mode, but if these words ring true, and you want to begin to experience a sense of greater ease, yoga may be something you may want to try.

By Carlos Gonzalez

Carlos Gonzalez teaches English at Miami Dade College and yoga and wellness in the community through Miami Firm Body, the company he co-founded with his wife, Maribel. He works with words, movement, and the body. His calling is to invite others to join him in the joy of searching within and finding the strength and courage to walk toward wholeness. Carlos is a spell caster, an educational trickster whose core mission is to transform grief into a source of possible beauty, vulnerability into strength, and fear into wonder.

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